Free Bones and Ashes by Gemma Holden Page B

barely stand. “I’m fine,” she said. “We need to get you to a doctor.” She put his arm around her shoulder and slipped her arm around his waist.
    “I should never have allowed you to come,” he said, panting.
    She steered him toward the carriage. “When the mirror broke did you hear something?”
    “The ghost?”
    “No. I thought I heard a woman scream.”
    “I didn’t hear anything.” 
    Perhaps she had been mistaken.
    Tobin opened the door of the carriage and she helped Aren in. “Do you want me to take you home?” she asked.
    He shook his head. “If my landlady saw me like this she would think I’d been involved in a fight. I had enough trouble persuading her to let me rent the room.”
    She had meant take him home to the family mansion. She had forgotten it was no longer his home. She didn’t even know where his boarding house was. 
    “You need to see a doctor. I could take you to Xan,” she offered.
    “Take me to my office. I know a doctor.”
    “Is he alive?”
    “He used to be.”
    “It’s not healthy to be stitched up by the living dead. They have diseases.” 
    “He’s a skeleton. He’s had all his flesh and organs removed and he removes his hands and boils them in water before he touches you.”
    The carriage pulled away. Raiden took out a handkerchief and held it to the back of Aren’s head. There was blood on the back of his white collar and matted in his hair, but the bleeding had slowed.
    “What are you going to do about the ghost?” she asked.
    Aren leaned his head back against the seat and closed his eyes. “I have to get rid of him. He’s too dangerous. I’ll get an order from a judge to have Matherson’s corpse exhumed so I can get a piece of his bone. Then I will force him to cross over.”
    “He might calm down in a few days, once he’s adjusted to being dead.”
    “I can’t risk it. It’s better now while he’s still only recently dead. The longer he’s here, the harder it will be to make him move on.”
    She said nothing. She would never find out what had happened now. Matherson wouldn’t help her. She would never know the truth. “I should never have made you take me.” She had been so naive to think she could do something. 
    The carriage stopped outside a building with a black sign that read, ‘Smallpeace, Dawes and Pumprey, Solicitors’, in gold letters.
    “His landlady might know something,” Aren said. “I’m going to see her tomorrow. I will tell you if I find out anything.”
    “I could come with you,” Raiden said hopefully.
    “Not after what just happened with Matherson. You could have been injured.”
    “You’re just speaking to his landlady. What could happen to me?”
    “I can’t take you. And if I find out you went there by yourself, I’ll tell your grandmother.”
    “You wouldn’t.”
    He sighed. “You’re right. I wouldn’t.”
    “It’s not fair.” She was tired of being powerless, tired of doing as she was told without question. “You don’t know what it’s like to have no magic. To be such a disappointment to everyone.”
    “You’re not a disappointment,” Aren said softly.
    “I am. It’s not just the magic though. As a man, you can do whatever you want, go wherever you want. As a woman, I’m powerless. I can’t go anywhere without an escort. I don’t have a choice in anything I do. But I can’t let this go. I have to find out what happened to my mother. No one else seems to care, not even my grandmother. Matherson is the key. I know he is. Please, Aren, let me go with you.”
    He hesitated. “It means that much to you?”
    “It means everything.”
    He went to run his hand through his hair, but managed to stop himself. “I’ll come for you tomorrow afternoon.” He didn’t sound happy at the prospect. He climbed out of the carriage and shut the door before she could thank him.
     

 
     
    Chapter Six
     
    The school was quiet; classes were over for the day. She had been fine in the carriage, but